Stealing Heaven (55 page)

The air on the Mount Sainte-Genevieve smelled like clover and fruit. The abbey's special guesthouse, reserved for important church visitors, stood in a grove of plum trees, and when Heloise woke the morning after her arrival, her nose filled with the sweetish smell of ripening fruit. After breakfast, she walked down the hill, to Abelard's lodgings on the Rue de Garlande. Descending the slope, she stopped to look across the river at the Ile. From where she stood, the island appeared serene, the masses of hurrying legs, the murky streets strangely mute. There was only a tangle of willows along the riverbank and turrets pointing at the sky.

She headed for Abelard's door. A servant opened and gestured her into the solar. The room was plainly furnished, spotlessly clean, the residence of a monk. She stood by the window, tucking her hands into her sleeves. Behind her back, a door opened cautiously and someone said, low, "God's greeting, lady mother." She wrenched around.

"Father will be back shortly." Astrolabe scratched his ear, blushing. "I'm to entertain you."

Heloise smiled, tremulous. "Don't you want to?"

"Aye, I didn't mean—" He stood on one leg, fidgeting.

She went to him, brushed the hair from his eyes, and kissed him lightly on the forehead. Under her touch, she could feel his body locked tight with tension. She said, "My dearest love, you're a
very
handsome young man." He didn't answer. "I'm glad to see you, son.”

He nodded, looking uneasily toward the door. She studied the dark-blond hair that curled around his collar. He was very tall, but thin, vulnerable-looking. She thought, He does not have his father's aggressive temperament. She could feel tears stinging her eyelids. "Son," she said swiftly, "are you well, how do you like Paris? Oh, it is so wonderful to see you, this is the most wonderful day of my life, you don't know." She broke off, conscious that she was babbling like an idiot.

Astrolabe glanced at his mother's face. "Lady," he said gravely, "would you like some ale? I could get you something to drink."
 

She dabbed at her eyes. "Please don't go to any trouble—"

 
"It's no trouble."

When the servant had brought bowls of ale, they sat on stools by the window and drank and talked. Or, rather, Heloise talked. The boy, uncomfortable, answered her politely in as few words as possible. He kept darting his eyes into the road, obviously anxious for Abelard to return.

"I think," she said to him at last, "that you are greatly ill at ease with me. Mayhap I should leave and come back later when your father is here."

He shook his head roughly. "Oh no, madame. I mean, lady mother. Don't mind me" He added, sighing, "That's just my manner. "I'm sorry."

Heloise almost reached out her hand to touch him. "Don't be sorry. I could never be displeased with you. I—you're a little frightened of me, aren't you?"

"No."

"But that's natural. You don't know me

 
"No. But my father often speaks of you."

 
Surprised, Heloise said, "He does?"

 
"Often."

Heloise edged the stool closer. "What does he say?" She grinned conspiratorially.

Smiling for the first time, Astrolabe said, "That you are the most admirable woman he has ever known, and a fighter, and nobody but you could wage war with the Lord for fifteen years." He gave her a covert glance of amusement.

Heloise threw back her head and laughed. "He said that?" She set her bowl on the windowsill. "Well, I don't fight as much now as I once did."

There was a pause. "Lady," Astrolabe said, "what is it like in Champagne?"

"Lovely, perfectly . . . lovely,"

"Is the Paraclete a
small abbey? Do you still go out to the fields and plow? Is the river really emerald?" Coltish, he bounced to his feet and began hopping about the room.

"Whoa!" she laughed. "Would you like to visit me? You can see everything for yourself." "When?"

"At the end of the summer. After Lammas, possibly."

"My father won't permit it."

"Of course he will. I'll speak to him. By then you'll be ready for a
holiday from study, won't you?"

He smiled shyly. "Lady, when you were a student, did you have difficulty with logic?"

"Sometimes." She remembered her first lessons with Abelard, those boring treatises of Boethius. "I should be happy to help you with your lessons, if you like."

He stopped pacing and faced her uncertainly. "Would you?"

"Certainly." He ran into the bedroom. Heloise got up and followed. The inner chamber was large, with two narrow beds and a table piled with papers and books. Next to the table sat Abelard's old armchair, the carvings worn and chipped. She closed her eyes, struggling for control. Turning, she went back to the solar and sat down. A moment later, Astrolabe came in carrying a stack of books and a
wax tablet; he dumped the armload at her feet. "You're reading all of these? God help you, child."

Astrolabe laughed. She reached down for the top book. He said, "That's my father's. For his theology class."

"Didn't he promise the pope not to teach theology?"

The boy shrugged. "I know nothing about it. Only that this work is too advanced for me. Father said so."

She glanced at the tide.
Sic et non.
Yes and no. Pro and con. She looked up. "If it's too difficult, drop it. Work on something at your level."

He faltered. "But it's your book."

Startled, she said, "What do you mean?"

He sat down across from her, shrugging a little. "Why, my father said that you gave him the idea, that you had done much of the research as a girl. Don't you remember?"

"Sic et non," Heloise exclaimed. "Dear God, it can't—" Quickly she leafed to the first page and scanned the prologue. This work, Abelard wrote, was the attempt of an inquiring mind to arrive at a positive truth by means of logic. She flipped to the first hypothesis:

That faith should be founded on human reason—and the reverse.
She thought, laughing to herself, Abbot Bernard would love this. After the proposition came a list of quotations, some pro, some con. Many of the contradictions Heloise vaguely recognized as the results of her searching through the Bible and the Holy Fathers, but there were others that Abelard himself had added, and he had gone on to analyze the differences among them.

At her knee, Astrolabe said, "Do you like it?"

"I like it."

"It's very critical. I've heard people say so."

"It's honest," she murmured. Silently she read, "The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning. It is through doubting that we begin to seek, and through seeking that we eventually perceive the truth." She said aloud, "Your father is not afraid to explore the unknown."

There were 158 hypotheses in
Sic et non.
She was relieved to see that Abelard drew no conclusions; instead, he presented the contradictions as a subject for investigation. He had taken Heloise's seeds, those scraps and scrawlings that she had mislaid in her travels between Paris and Argenteuil, and he had given her, fifteen years later, a full-grown oak. Wanting to cry again, she sucked in her breath and said, "Sweet heart, why don't we start with mathematics?"

An hour later, when Abelard came in, they were sitting with their heads bent over the tablet.

 

Heloise rested her head against the trellis in Abelard's garden, lazily watching the moon touch bright patches on the hedges. The night was pleasantly warm, and a tentative breeze ruffled the July leaves. She watched Abelard, half sprawled in the shadows, then gazed down at Astrolabe curled into a sleeping bundle at her feet. All day she had been studying the boy. He was odd, alternately diffident and hungry for affection, still babyish in his longing for attention. She had wanted him to be a copy of Abelard. He was not. There was no reason, of course, why he should be, and she reminded herself of that.

"Lady," Abelard said. "I thought you were asleep."

"No." He paused a moment. "Lady, everything has come out all right. Surely you must see that now."

Heloise tried to peer into his face, but it was no use. There was only his voice coming at her in the darkness. "Mmmm. But it has not been what I would have planned."

He said, "Your plans did not take into account God's schemes for us."

How many tears had she shed? Now she would weep no more. Still, this evening, she felt empty and stupidly happy. "God's will be done," she said, because that was what Abelard wanted to hear.

The breeze shifted, a lute song died away, then abruptly wound closer. She turned slightly, straining to catch the tune. It came to her now, familiar as the skin on her face, a sound of warmth, love, the crystal music of remembered happiness.

Abelard was humming softly, "Ah, would to God that night must never end."

"Nor that my lover far from me should wend."
 

"Nor watchman day nor dawning ever send. Ah God, ah God, the dawn!" Impulsively he reached for her hand. "It comes so soon."

 

Louis the Fat lay sick in the royal bedchamber at the Cite Palace, struck down some weeks earlier by a sudden flux of the bowels. His advisers were eager to remove him to his hunting lodge at Bethizy, where he could escape the fetid odors of the city. But moving the king was a major engineering problem; his extreme corpulence prevented him from sitting or getting to his feet without help. He could no longer mount a horse. A litter stood in readiness for the departure, because the king's condition had improved greatly, but still Suger delayed. A few more days, he said, and he ordered his master and beloved old friend carried to a couch in the great hall and propped against pillows.

Heloise rode in through the iron gate, Astrolabe at her side. But when she had dismounted and was about to ascend the broad stone stairs leading to the hall, the boy suddenly took fright and insisted that he would remain with the horses. She left him behind finally and went in alone. The dark hall buzzed ceaselessly with knights and courtiers, everyone's mouth going. Heloise, wondering how a sick man could mend amidst this commotion, stepped inside and announced herself to a chamberlain. Gesturing her to follow, he began pushing through the crowds. When they reached the dais at the front of the hall, the chamberlain halted abruptly. A knot of barons surrounded the king, and at the foot of the divan crouched a blond boy, his eyes sad and lost. When he noticed Heloise, he flashed a delicate smile, as if to say,
This is all too noisy for me.
He was about Astrolabe's age, a year younger, she thought. She smiled at him and inclined her head slightly. The gentle boy did not look like a king.

All at once, someone's voice rose sharply, the barons and the prince quickly dispersed, and there remained only one person at the king's side, the short, stolid Abbot Suger. In a loud voice, the chamberlain bellowed Heloise's name. She gulped a large breath and started toward the dais.

Just behind Louis's head, Suger was staring at her. He gazed from Heloise to the king, and back to Heloise once more. Heloise knelt briefly. "Sire—"

"Lady Heloise," Louis said formally, "venerable abbess of the Paraclete. Lady, your immense renown echoes through our kingdom."

Blushing, Heloise got to her feet and looked at him. Never before had she seen such a fat human being. Vast mounds of flesh rippled in waves over the couch, so that it was impossible to imagine a frame of bone underneath. He bore no resemblance to the plump, robust man she had met so many years ago in the palace garden. Suger handed him a goblet; Louis drank, his hand twitching with palsy. He beamed at Heloise. "I've been wanting to meet you."

"Sire, you would not remember, but we have met once."

"Really?"

"Years ago. In your garden. I twisted my ankle, and you got a horse to take me home."

"Really?" he repeated. "I don't remember."

"Oh, of course you would not. I was a young girl then."

Louis smiled, his bleary eyes bubbling among the folds of flesh. He waved a page to bring a stool. "Please. Come up here and sit."

Heloise went up two steps and sat down. A foul smell suddenly lashed at her nostrils and she tried not to sniff. Near the king's couch she noticed a chamber pot and quickly darted her eyes away.

The king handed his goblet to Suger. He said to Heloise, "The Paraclete. This place was wilderness when you arrived."

"True. It was not inhabited."

"Rumor says that you yourself plowed the fields and constructed shelters. Is that true?"

"Aye." She grinned at him. "I have become a passable plow-woman."

Louis nodded. "Like our sainted Abbot Bernard. He built Clairvaux in the same way. Lady, tell me this. Does your vineyard prosper?" Heloise looked over to Abbot Suger, who was appraising her with expressionless eyes. It was impossible to know if he remembered her from Argenteuil, but surely he must. She turned back to Louis. "We prosper, Sire, because of the love and goodwill of our neighbors. If it were my choice, the Paraclete would remain a small house. But we are flooded with applicants, and it seems that the Lord sends more women all the time. We are forced to expand, and yet we have not the means to do so." Louis nodded again.

"Our requirements grow faster than I can meet them."

Suger bent close to Louis's ear, whispering. The king said to Heloise, "Lady, I have promised to help you—"

Suger broke in. "We mentioned duty exemption on all goods bought in the kingdom. I believe that was the gist of the grant." He spoke in a clipped voice, without looking at Heloise.

"That would be a tremendous help," Heloise said fervently. "Equally helpful would be exemption on any goods we might wish to sell." She stared at the floor, swallowing at her boldness.

Louis glanced at Suger and said, "Of course. They must have exemption on both buying and selling. I'd forgotten that. What do you think?"

Suger sniffed. "That sounds reasonable," he said haltingly. Shifting his weight, he gestured to a cluster of clerks standing against the wall. One of them ran up with a table, another with parchment and ink. Louis began to dictate. When the royal charter had been prepared, a clerk carried it to the couch for the king's signature. The great seal of France was brought, the scarlet wax melted on a small brazier, and the document completed. The king smiled. "And your lord, my dear abbess. Is he in good health?"